Some 20,000 so far, according to BBC TV this morning (Tuesday morning), plus this local story. This CNN story pegs it at “10,000” and is about a day behind but still gives good background information.
They’re fleeing a fresh outbreak of fighting with ethnic armies near the border. The trouble comes in the wake of Burma’s sham election on Sunday, designed to legitimize the junta’s hold on power.
Excerpt from the CNN story: “According to a report on the website Burma Election Tracker, the clashes began when DKBA militia members who had been employed as government border security troops rebelled because the Myanmar military was forcing people to vote at gunpoint in this weekend’s election.”
DKBA = Democratic Karen Buddhist Army. (The Karen are an ethnic minority on both sides of the border.) Fighting’s been going on across from here for decades. The area involved is Mae Sot district of Tak province, in Thailand’s Lower North. My last visit to Mae Sot was in 1989, before they even built the Friendship Bridge there across the river. You could still hear artillery strikes even back then. At least the bridge makes it easier now for non-combatants to flee to this side.
And you think the Thai army is which religion exactly? :dubious:
IIRC from my years up in the North, most Karen – called Kariang by the Thais – are Christians, but there are some Buddhist and even animist groups. That may have something to do with the emphasis in the name, they don’t want to be thought Christian. Just a guess.
The fighting spread south as far as Three Pagodas Pass on Burma’s border with Thailand’s Kanchanaburi province. The Burmese army seems to be back in control of Myawaddy town, where the trouble started, but reports vary. Refugees are either returning or more are coming over, depending on which report you believe.
Some shells landed in Thailand, but the Thai army has been ordered not to respond … for now. They think this round could drag on for maybe three months, a number that some official no doubt pulled out of his ass in the time-honored local tradition.
They very much don’t want to be thought Christian - the larger Karen militia, the Karen National Union, is heavily Christian, and has been fighting the central government off and on for decades. The DKBA broke off from them in the nineties to strike a rapprochement with the junta.
McClelland’s a Mother Jones reporter who spent six weeks teaching English in Thailand, near the border with Burma, and wrote a book about it. She was living and working with KNU members, so her perspective isn’t exactly objective. shrugsSiam Sam, have you read this? Would be interesting to see if someone on the scene thought McClelland’s take was more-or-less credible.
That’s probably why they were hired to be government border security troops. Many of the minority armies surrendered under an amnesty in the past decade or so, and the fighting has died down to some extent – or it HAD until now – but you still have to watch out for mines and such.
Not read that book, nor have I heard of it, so I don’t want to pre-judge it. However, I have my doubts as to whether six weeks is enough time to get a handle on what is a very complex and decades-old situation. And I’m not a fan of Mother Jones. And there’s a big problem in Thailand with writers of all stripes coming here with preconceived notions on a variety of topics and cherry-picking their data to confirm them. Of course, you can never go wrong dissing the Burmese army or government, may the bastards rot in Hell where they belong. But it’s not always good guys versus bad guys. Sometimes it’s bad guys versus bad guys. A lot of these ethnic armies fund their movements through the drug trade; I’ve lost track of which ones do or don’t or might.
Just a small update. Looks like most of those who fled have returned to Burma despite warnings that the situation remains unstable. It’s thought the Burmese army will soon make a sweep through the area to kick butt on subversive elements.
EDIT: Hmmm. They may not all have returned voluntarily. See here.
Well, it’s one thing to have an army with a majority of soldiers being Buddhist and another to have a Buddhist Army, strikes me odd the same as an Amish electronics store or a Muslim pig farm would.
Man, the junta are just scum. But the rebels aren’t saints either. Note at the end of the story that Thais are not allowed to cross the border now after a Thai man was recently kidnapped and held for ransom by the DBKA.
A spammer came in and he was reporting that. After we deal with the spammers, their posts usually disappear from the view of members and registered users.
